Steven Rea, Inquirer Movie Columnist and Critic

Posted:
Friday, April 6, 2012, 3:01 AM

It turns out you can go home again - but if you do, Eugene Levy's going to be in your bedroom wiggling his furry eyebrows over your skin magazines, and the grade-schooler you used to babysit for on Teletubbies Tuesdays is about to turn 18, and she wants you to be her "first."

And you're married now, and you have a little kid who's developing a rash.

Yes, adulthood - of a sort - figures into the equation in American Reunion, a Generation Y raunchfest that reteams the principals of the 1999 R-rated smash American Pie (and its most distinguished sequels) for a 13-years-on high school get-together. Jim (Jason Biggs), Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas), Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas), Oz (Chris Klein), and Stifler (Seann William Scott) reassemble in East Green Falls for their Class of '99 celebration. It's a reunion that finds the old friends grappling with new dilemmas.

For Jim, the problem is how to keep the marriage fresh. (And how to get people to stop cracking Adam Sandler look-alike jokes.) American Reunion opens with our hero on his laptop, navigating a porn site, and Jim's highschool-sweetheart-turned-wife, Michelle (Alyson Hannigan), in the bathtub, navigating with a showerhead. Both are caught in the act - onanism interruptus. But at least they talk about it, and vow to spend some serious time over the weekend getting physical - with each other.

However, a party-hearty agenda - not to mention the "smokin' hot 18-year-old" Kara (Ali Cobrin) with the fond memories of her babysitter - threatens to torpedo Jim and Michelle's plans.

Speaking of torpedoes, there is Stifler, a relentless lout, who encourages Jim to philander with the birthday girl and "take what you learn from Kara, bring it home, and apply it to Michelle."

What Stifler does to a cooler of beer in another scene - it's an act of revenge - is similarly ill-advised.

In some ways, American Reunion is the Charlize Theron indie Young Adult all over again: In both, a small-town high school reunion is the setting for a lot of nostalgia and narcissism and nasty behavior. Jason Reitman directed Young Adult, and got Theron to bare her soul; Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg direct American Reunion, and get a bevy of actresses to bare their breasts.

And get Biggs to go full frontal.

While the focus is still on the guys (Finch is living a pseudo-sophisticate lie, Oz's sex bomb of a girlfriend isn't bringing happiness into his life, etc.), American Reunion does take some effort to show how the girls are making out, so to speak. In addition to American Pie veterans Vicky (Tara Reid) and Heather (Mena Suvari), there is newcomer Selena (Dania Ramirez), whom nobody paid attention to back in school, and who now fixes drinks - and transfixes the male clientele - at the local bar.

In addition to Levy, playing Jim's advice-doling dad, and Jennifer Coolidge as Stifler's legendary mom, Rebecca DeMornay makes an (uncredited) appearance as another of the American Pie/American Reunion parentals.

I suppose it's a spoiler to say who ends up out on the football field, in the middle of the night, clinching with Finch's mom. But somebody does.